The Internet has brought many advantages in communications to its users, but has also brought substantial security concerns along with those advantages. Hackers gain access to private records of individuals and of corporations and governmental agencies through their connection to the Internet. Identity theft has become a buzzword for a major crime in which a person's secret account numbers, access codes, social security numbers, and other related information are stolen from a person and used to charge purchases, transfer funds, etc. from the person rightfully entitled thereto. Such theft is usually the result of a theft of the information from an owner's computer. Each transaction in which secret information of the owner is transmitted to a third party becomes subject to invasion by a hacker. Once a hacker has access into a person's computer, the electronic files in conventional Windows programs wherein account numbers and passwords are located are easily identified and opened.
Personal computers are typically loaded with an operating system, such as the Windows® operating system, from which is run application programs such as spread sheets, word processing and accounting programs that often contain sensitive and proprietary information. Typically viruses, Trojan horses, rootkits and other malicious programs that might contaminate a personal computer are based on the Windows® operating system and require a computer utilizing Windows® software to propagate and to operate.
Corporate computer departments typically have servers centrally located with a plurality of personal computers connected to the servers through a network. Generally, personal computers are considered to have an effective life span of three to four years such that the corporate IT staff is replacing the personal computers within the corporation on a cycle that replaces all of the personal computers approximately every four years. Personal computers have their own operating systems, usually Windows® software and application programs loaded on the personal computer, resulting in substantially large total licensing fees for the corporation. Thin client computers are computers that have an operating system that permits the computer to be connected to a file server to receive application software and data without the ability to save data on a hard drive within the thin client computer system.
It would be desirable to provide a method of extending the effective life of personal computers without suffering a loss in operative effectiveness. It would also be desirable to provide a method of converting old personal computers into thin client computer systems that have less susceptibility to attack from malicious software and to loss of data from the computer hard drive.